l4d_yama

I've more or less finished the middle ropeway station area, but I've run into a problem. I've made it sort of like an island, on top of some cliffs so that I can have the players get on at A, not move in the empty middle part to make the journey seem longer, then get off here once A is blocked out by the fog behind them. The fog is set at 1500 units, and the cliffs around this 'island' go down ~1800 units from the cablecar, the idea being that they should fade into the skybox colour and it just seems like you're above a huge drop. But ingame, there doesn't seem to be any vertical fog, if I look down from where the cablecar would be, it's like being in a tube of fog with nothing at either end. Is the vertical height just a lot higher than the horizontal distance, or is there some setting I can use to get this to work? Otherwise I'll need to put a floor beneath the cliffs which is just going to drain performance more and eat up the entity limit which I'm already worried about hitting.

Looking down from the height of the carriage:

http://img185.imageshack.us/img185/6259/fog1.jpg

Without fog:

http://img4.imageshack.us/img4/8902/fog2.jpg

i finally got some work done on the first map last week, mostly finishing off the layout and making some sign textures but i've started detailing a couple of buildings too. these screens are of the red light/bar district, there's also a high street section at the end with designer stores and skyscrapers but that's still all dev textures.

survivors start on a rooftop, go through the red light district, cut through a host bar onto the high street and then there'll be a crescendo through an eletronics store leading to the ambulance i posted a while back in an alleyway.

[Blocked Image: http://img216.imageshack.us/img216/7320/l4dyama10031.jpg]

[Blocked Image: http://img91.imageshack.us/img91/930/l4dyama10033.jpg]

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i've been trying to find out the best way to do that. VERC says you can make a .rad file but all that does it put a light entity next to the brush when it compiles which is no good for bigger signs. can you make them emit light with a certain render mode or are light entities the only way?

the signs fixed on the walls are brushes (Valve actually switched from props to brushes for a lot of things like this in L4D too), just because I already have about 25 textures for them and I can have more variation in size with brushes.

i'm going to try making a .rad file anyway, i'm just not sure if all the lights it creates count towards the entity limit or what effect it has on performance.

i've spent about the last week working almost nonstop on making new textures and props for the city map, i've started getting t-junction errors already though so i think i might have some problems fairly soon.

don quixote, a megastore that sells practically everything

[Blocked Image: http://img43.imageshack.us/img43/2047/l4dyama10084.jpg]

labi, a huge electronics store. the original plan was to have the players moving up floor by floor as a crescendo, turning on the power to open the shutters on each floor, then taking a fire escape out the back but i realised that would take far too much time/custom props.

[Blocked Image: http://img43.imageshack.us/img43/541/l4dyama10085.jpg]

the actual building you escape through, a sushi restraunt

[Blocked Image: http://img188.imageshack.us/img188/5979/l4dyama10086.jpg]

happy burger

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other buildings:

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[Blocked Image: http://img188.imageshack.us/img188/9774/l4dyama10093.jpg]

i think the lights work well, since it makes it look alive but there's nobody around, like everything just stopped all of a sudden. i'm not really happy with the lighting as it is now though so something's going to change eventually.

anyway, some more progress, mostly on the ramen stall alleyway, and some more buildings on the high street:

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